Spaceport America gets its license

The Las Cruces Sun-News reported Monday that Spaceport America officials expected the FAA to issue Monday an environmental impact report associated with the spaceport, one of the final steps before the FAA would issue a spaceport license (officially a “launch site operator’s license”) for the planned commercial spaceport. Well, Spaceport America not only got the report, they also got their FAA license. The issuance of the license was one of three major milestones required as part of the funding package state legislators approved in 2006. One of the other two, the creation of a local tax district, has already been accomplished, while the other, the signing of a lease with anchor tenant Virgin Galactic, could be wrapped up as soon as this week, Steve Landeene, executive director of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority, said in the Sun-News article.

With all of those issues about to be resolved, construction of the spaceport facilities is scheduled to begin in the first quarter of 2009 and be completed “as soon as possible”, Landeene said in the statement announcing the spaceport license; the release later pegs late 2010 as the completion date for the completion of the terminal and hangar facilities at the spaceport.

Exiting FAA Acting Administrator Bobby Sturgell: “You’ll notice I’m throwing new runways, equipment, money, jobs, acronyms, programs, kudos, and concocted self-serving study “results” at communities right before I eject from office. That’s on purpose. The study results make me appear to have been a regulator rather than simple aeromercantile shill. Runways and other rewards are called ‘bribes’. They buy silent cooperation of the recipients. As for the others, I’ll just abuse them. I’ll blame Air Traffic Controllers, pilots, Congress, co-workers, community residents, Israel, India, the Philippines, potash miners, unions, Mother Nature, and even my economic co-conspirators the airlines on my way out, for all my own failures. My best strategy is comprised of the bribes, though – providing me private-sector job security for years to come, while making everybody forget those 3,500-and-climbing aviation fatalities occurring on my FAA ‘watch’”.http://www.bobbysturgell.org